Tuesday 19 September 2000

Cape Cod is the favourite North East US holiday destination. It's a peninsula surrounded by sandy beaches backed by sand dunes...

...  and tourist-oriented towns and villages: very pretty, with lots of historic buildings and traditional New England architecture ...

We arrived after Labour Day which is the cut-off date for the end of the American holiday season, so everywhere was nice and quiet.

Drove round the central part of the Cape; those of you reading this who live in Eastbury will know why we had to take a picture of this town sign ...

Got hopelessly lost and very cross finding our way back to the cottage. Registered with Microsoft Network as our ISP, using a phone card since the phone in the cottage only allowed placement of local or toll-free calls and MSN didn't have a local number available. This involved setting up a sequence of about 35 digits interspersed with various pauses, but it eventually worked much to my amazement.

Wednesday 20 September 2000

The cottage included the use of the bicycles in the garage; a bigger heap of scrap you've never seen in your life. I eventually got two of them to work using an oil can, a tyre pump and a large spanner, and we wobbled down to the local shops to discover that Christine's bike had a slow puncture. Wobbled back even slower.

After lunch, had another go at the bikes then gave up in disgust. Drove out to the far end of the Cape, where there's very little except sand dunes and pine trees;  very peaceful. Dinner in Christine's Restaurant (no relation) with absolutely superb seafood cakes; these were an appetizer, but you didn't need a main course afterwards, let alone dessert.

Thursday 21 September 2000

Spent the day in Sandwich; a lovely little town with loads of historic sites: windmill, watermill  etc...

One of the sites we visited was the Thornton Burgess museum. He was America's equivalent of Beatrix Potter: born in 1874, a conservationist before his time, wrote children's stories about animals including a Peter Rabbit; the similarities are remarkable. Afterwards, went to the Plantation Heritage Centre, a huge gallery / museum complex including Japanese art, naive American painting, an early carousel that you could ride on, and a superb classic car museum which included a De Lorean and a Cord ...

In the evening, walked out along a vast boardwalk across the coastal shallows ...

Friday 22 September 2000

Visited the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Arts, which was unfortunately undergoing refurbishment leaving approximately seven pictures on display. Drove down to Chatham in the south-east of the Cape, and walked along the beach in beautiful sunshine for an hour and a half without seeing another human being - wonderful. All along the beach are the remains of horseshoe crabs, bizarre looking creatures with long spiny tails whose soft parts have been eaten by the seagulls ...

Christine's birthday today, so celebration dinner at Christine's Restaurant again (more seafood cakes and chocolaty dessert), followed by a play at the Cape Cod Repertory Company: A Perfect Ganesh. An excellent production performed by just four actors / tresses, about two elderly American ladies visiting India, their response to it and how it changed them.

Saturday 23 September 2000

Back to Bellingham, Mass. to visit Hilary and Ron, Christine's University and bellringing friends from Manchester who now also live in the Boston area.